Úrsúla laughed.
‘I could do with some fashion sense myself. I wish I could deal with the clothes thing like men do, just a new tie once in a while.’
‘You always look great. But seriously, that’s really good,’ he said and kissed her temple again. ‘She seems to be a hard worker. So next weekend you can send her home with the emails and you can come swimming with us.’
He turned in the doorway, smiled and winked at her, and for a second she felt a jolt of the electricity she had used to feel when he smiled at her. He became more handsome as the years passed and he would carry it well into old age. A hint of grey in his dark hair and stubble would just make him look even cooler. She couldn’t fail to see how other women looked at him, and when they were out somewhere in company she was proud that he was her husband. But this flash of lightning was inevitably accompanied by the guilt that had coloured every aspect of their relationship since moving back home. He regularly asked what the problem was, but whether they were with the counsellor or alone at home, she was still unable to say out loud that she felt a kind of emotional shortfall when it came to him and the children, that she knew deep down that she loved them, but didn’t truly feel it. She couldn’t say that she felt an affection for them any more than for people in general; she liked people and wanted to help them, and that included these three people. But beyond that … nothing much.
She had been warned about this long ago, both in training and when being supervised during her first couple of years working in disaster relief, and by colleagues in the field, who told her that while some of them suffered from PTSD, with bouts of sweating, trembling and nightmares, others became hardened. She was clearly one of the second group. This wasn’t something she had ever expected. She was resilient, with her head screwed on properly, or so she had thought: a sensible, down-to-earth, tough person. But when Médecins Sans Frontières had borrowed her from UNHCR to organise the emergency camps in Liberia during the Ebola epidemic, everything had changed.
It was in Liberia: after a few weeks of gulping back the fear, dressed in yellow coveralls in which the tears and the sweat mingled in the overpowering heat, and seeing through the goggles how a human body could shrivel into an anonymous pool of vomit and shit and slime and blood, it was as if this had become her only reality. This was the real human situation that nobody at home was aware of or capable of understanding. And she couldn’t explain it to them. There was no way to tell the story. There were no words that could describe the Ebola epidemic. There was also no easy way to have this kind of thing stored away in your memory. She felt that she had been wearing those plastic coveralls ever since.
But she couldn’t bring herself to tell Nonni all this. She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t feel she was really here at all, that part of her had been lost, dripping into the bloodstained earth in Liberia or blown up in Syria, and that she was no longer sure what feelings she still bore for him. She couldn’t tell him, so she just shook her head.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said, unable to contemplate hurting him.
12
Daylight made its way in through the window, so it had to be around the middle of the day. Stella sat up on the sofa and was frozen with fright as fragments of the weekend appeared in her thoughts. She had the strange feeling that she hadn’t been awake since Friday, but in fact, she had probably been awake more or less the whole weekend. It hadn’t been a normal wakefulness though, more a semi-dreamworld that had taken command of her senses, while her mind took a holiday. Now she’d need to piece those thoughts back together.
‘This is a fucking fantastic flat,’ she said as Gréta the newsreader appeared in the living room, fully dressed, make-up on and smiling, as if she had been awake for hours.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I inherited fishing quotas. It takes more than a journalist’s salary to pay for this.’
Stella admired the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city in two directions. The old town looked grey with its covering of dirty snow, but the steep corrugated-iron roofs had thrown off their coverings and the bright colours stood out in the gloom. Gréta went to the kitchen and could be heard pottering about.
‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she called out.
Stella tried to recall what had happened since she had come back here with the newsreader. She remembered bacon and eggs, a couple of cans of beer and some gales of laughter over something that in hindsight wasn’t so funny. She went to the bathroom, peed, washed her face and gulped cold water from the tap until her belly was bursting, but somehow her thirst remained unslaked. When she went into the kitchen, Gréta was placing pastries on an oven tray to heat up.
‘Hey, last night’s not all that clear … So I have to ask—’ Stella began, before Gréta cut her off.
‘I may be desperate, but I’m not a perv,’ she said sharply. ‘I’ve no interest in unconscious women.’
‘Sorry,’ Stella muttered, taking a seat on a barstool and wondering how the hell Gréta managed to look so immaculate – in her own, weird, old-lady kind of way.
‘Did you take an upper to wake you up this morning?’ she asked.
Gréta smiled. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t always take the Es they offer. Somehow I don’t trust myself to let go completely, so I just let the champagne do for the last part of the party yesterday.’
That explained how she could be on her feet as fresh as a daisy while Stella’s mind was still a mess.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she said. ‘Not that it matters, because I’ll not bother going again. That kind of atmosphere doesn’t do me any good.’
Stella smiled to herself in sympathy. That was exactly what she always told herself as well – every time.
‘Aren’t you on any dating apps?’ she asked.
Gréta shook her head. ‘Ach. I was on Tinder, but it didn’t work,’ she said with an apologetic smile. ‘The women I’m interested in don’t fancy me.’
Stella felt the same pang she had the night before as they had left the party together, and a desire grew inside her to help this woman. Turning down the old-lady vibe just one per cent would go a long way to boosting her chances.
‘I’ll fix your profile for you,’ she said, putting out a hand, and Gréta obediently passed across her phone.
Stella started by changing her profile picture to one that was newer and less formal. An ancient posed passport photo wasn’t ideal bait. She added a couple more photos of her with more or less the same hairstyle.
‘There’s nothing that pisses you off more than going on a date and finding that the other person has been using some really old photo,’ she said, with an accusing glance.
‘I was trying to lose a few years and a couple of kilos.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Stella said. ‘Nobody wants to be deceived. If you’re fooling women into thinking you’re young and slim, then you’re missing out on the ones who prefer them mature and broader.’
She said ‘broader’ even though a more straightforward adjective would have been appropriate; she didn’t want to be too direct by saying that some girls prefer fat women.
‘They really exist?’ Gréta sniffed.
‘Yep. The problem is you’re presenting yourself as something you’re not. Anyone meeting you would think you’re the type that sits in an old armchair and knits socks in front of the telly, when you live in a white designer apartment with splash paintings on the walls.’
‘Those are Jeff Elrods. Originals.’
‘Whatever. But there you go. I wouldn’t know which way up these pictures go, but you do. But nobody looking at you would imagine that. See what I mean?’
‘What? Is it the clothes, or what?’
Stella looked her up and down while she searched for the right words to tell the woman how to stop looking like a dork.
‘Well, if you want to wear old-lady gear…’
‘Trouser suits.’
‘Yeah. But if you’re going to wear a suit, then
stick to black, dark blue, grey. Go for a power-lesbian vibe and get away from the granny look. Those pastel colours have to go.’
‘Pastels work fine on television.’
‘But do you always have to be dressed for work? Pastels just scream senior citizen.’
‘I’m not even forty.’
‘Exactly.’
Stella turned to the profile text on Gréta’s Tinder profile and sighed. With a thumping hangover and with only half a mug of coffee inside her, she had thrown together a better bio than Gréta had managed to write – and no doubt had struggled with.
‘It’s about showing your strengths,’ she said, ‘instead of making light of the weaker points.’
She erased all the stuff about university degrees and political positions, and being interested in a ‘steady relationship’, and punched in a few words that would help Gréta start to reel them in. She handed the phone back and smiled with satisfaction as Gréta read the description of herself out loud, with wonder in her voice.
‘“Strong-minded, culturally aware, financially independent, solidly built lady who dreams of a princess to pamper, share laughs with and have fun together.”’
‘Let me know how many swipes you get,’ Stella said.
13
His nest was sheltered and dry. The temperature was just below zero but his padded boiler suit kept the cold out. He pulled the hood up before falling asleep and woke up with his whole body comfortably warm. As long as it stayed dry you could get through a heavy frost. This was something he knew from experience. He took a small torch from his breast pocket and shone its beam on the scrap torn from the newspaper. Úrsúla and the Devil. It was too painful a thought to imagine that this innocent creature had fallen into his grip. He was relieved that he had sent her a warning by leaving the note in her car. He hoped she would take notice of it. Once upon a time she had taken notice of everything he said, looking up at him with wide eyes, her face one big question as she waited uncertainly for a sign that he was joking or not. If he laughed, then so would she, out loud and with all her little heart. Now and again he had got things wrong, told her something confusing or even things that children shouldn’t get to hear. The wretched booze didn’t bring out the best in people, and in that respect he was no better than anyone else.
He opened a crack and peered out of his nest. He needed to pee, and to walk and stretch his legs, but he didn’t want anyone to see him making his way out of his hiding place. This was his personal foxhole and the best place to keep a watchful eye on her, and he didn’t want to be kicked out of it. Nobody seemed to be about, so he slipped out and set off through the snow, which crunched under his feet. The old churchyard was at the end of the street and he could pee there.
The guy in the little corner shop was amiable and heated up his sandwich under the grill, adding that coffee came free with it. So he made the most of the offer and gulped down three mugs with milk, crumbling a few lumps of sugar in there as well while he waited for his sandwich. He paid with the small change the lad at Hlemmur had given him. As soon as he was outside the shop, he bit into the sandwich. It was piping hot, so the melted cheese burned his lip, but he liked seeing the steam rising from it into the cold air.
He ate as he walked, and when he was outside Úrsúla’s house he swept snow from one of the low concrete bollards across the street and gazed at her through the window as he finished his sandwich. She was sitting at her desk, a cheek turned towards him, and for a moment he felt she hadn’t changed at all, was still the lively little girl with endless questions on her lips. Then that feeling fizzled out as he recalled that she was halfway to being in the devil’s claws.
He felt the terror grip his heart as suddenly the golden light from her table lamp no longer seemed to be a warm and comforting glow that fell on her face, but was instead the glare from the burning fires of hell.
Monday
14
‘I have to confess that it completely slipped my mind,’ Permanent Secretary Óðinn said. ‘I’ll ask for information from your secretary and look into it today.’
Úrsúla smiled to hide her impatience. It wasn’t as if this was something major that he needed to be involved in. All that was needed was for him to look at the memo from the secretary, who had noted down the main points and supporting information from the mother on Friday, and then decide in whose hands to put the matter. This would take him two or three minutes at most. But to be fair, this was something she had mentioned to him in haste as he stood in the doorway after their first meeting, so he hadn’t noted anything down.
She told herself that she would need to take a few deep breaths and adjust to the ministry’s pace before she could demand that its staff shift up a gear to keep up with her. At any rate, that was her aim: a more efficient ministry that could deal with things fast. It was appalling how so many cases were caught up in the system, and that these mainly involved foreign citizens – which was her field of expertise. Asylum seekers could wait months for responses to appeals, and the endless uncertainty could drive people mad, with all the consequences that entailed.
She knew perfectly well how insecurity could affect people. If you didn’t feel safe, mindfulness was just some kind of fad for westerners who had no need to fear what tomorrow might bring. It was the opposite of human dignity to be able to aim for nothing more than surviving from one day to the next. So this was at the top of her list: finding ways for the ministry to shorten the time it took to process cases. Of course, she only had a year, but twelve months ought to be enough to get things moving in the right direction.
She sat down with the heavy South Coast Highway folder in front of her. This was an issue that had been mentioned when she had been asked to take the job; tough decisions would need to be taken, she’d been told. Personally, she had little liking for this kind of private enterprise, but the state’s lack of initiative regarding the road network had already cost too many lives, so it was clear that something had to be done to redevelop the most heavily used roads in the south-west.
By the time midday came around, she was dazed and felt sure she had already done a day’s work. She had requested that the entire staff come to the open area on the third floor so she could speak to them all, but as she faced them she didn’t feel inspired to make a stirring speech, so she simply thanked them for their warm welcome and hoped that they would work well together. She could see from the smile on Óðinn’s face that she had said enough. He led the applause that morphed into general mutter as some people drifted back to work and others pulled on their coats to walk over the road to the ministry’s staff canteen. She was starving so followed their example. When she arrived in the hall, though, her cheeks rosy from the brisk walk, one of the canteen staff hurried over with a look of distress on her face, and Úrsúla realised that it probably wasn’t standard practice for ministers to use the canteen.
‘Just sit there, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring you something to eat.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Úrsúla said, but then Óðinn was at her side, agreeing with the woman.
‘Normally it’s only the minister of finance who eats here, because it’s convenient. But when other ministers come here for lunch, as they do sometimes, we don’t want them to waste their time standing in a queue,’ he said. ‘So I arrange for the minister to sit down and their food is brought to them. You don’t have any dietary foibles, do you?’
‘I eat everything,’ Úrsúla said, and noted the look of relief on the server’s face as she hurried away while Óðinn lightly but firmly took her by the arm and steered her to a seat.
‘This table is kept free for you and other ministers, and their closest colleagues,’ he said. ‘And they’ll serve you here.’
Úrsúla sighed. She had no choice but to let this cloying attitude remain in place, at least to begin with, while people learned to trust her. Right now protesting could be taken as discourtesy, and she had no intention of offending anyone by trampling roughshod over their
habits and customs.
She had hardly sat down when the server was back and placing a tray in front of her.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘You’re really looking after me.’
The server glowed, took a small bottle from the pocket of her apron and added it to the tray.
‘Ministerial sauce,’ she said.
Úrsúla looked blank.
‘Chilli sauce,’ Óðinn explained. ‘It kills off stomach bugs.’
Úrsúla thanked them, and stifled a laugh, realising that the permanent secretary was entirely serious. She was not overly fond of spicy food, but for the first few days she would go along with it, although considering all the fuss, it didn’t seem likely that she would use the canteen frequently. On the other hand, she was determined to stick to her guns on the ministerial car, whatever the police commissioner had to say about it. She hadn’t even had a driver in Syria, so she certainly wasn’t going to allow herself to be driven around the city like some princess.
Once she had finished eating, she needed a cigarette, so before she went back along the ministerial corridor to her office, she sneaked out to the fourth-floor balcony the cleaner had shown her, and found that she was already there. Maybe the girl didn’t do much else, other than standing there, smoking on the balcony. It was good to know she didn’t need to stand there alone in the wind getting her nicotine fix, though.
‘How are you?’ she asked, as the girl lit her cigarette for her.
‘Fine,’ the girl said. ‘And you?’
‘Oh, you know,’ she replied and laughed. ‘This morning I’ve become familiar with the permanent secretary’s forgetfulness, the ministerial table in the canteen and the special ministerial sauce, so I’m looking forward to finding out what else I need to know to become a proper minister.’
‘The ministerial rubbish,’ the girl said.
Betrayal Page 4
